Each year, a designer or practice with a significant and critical position is asked to present three workshop charrettes revolving around their interests, ideology and methodology as a graduate studio in the College of Architecture and Design at Lawrence Tech.

An exploration of large scale sensual atmospheres and environments where bodies, spaces,

furniture and plants all contribute to new primal worlds. The work explores the body as it relates to its environment as one of the most ostracized interactions within contemporary architectural work when directly addressing human pleasure. The explorations capitalize on the various ways in which the body engages with its surroundings and pushes to the extreme of how it fits into the world, forcing the bodily and the constructed world to interact in much more dirty, messy and sensual ways. The projects work through inflatables and engages with oversized turgid and bodily forms. Eight teams have been asked to be simultaneously technical and sensual to create engineering marvels and fantasy experiences.

Projects lead by:

Aaron Blendowski

Benje Feehan

Carrie Smith

David Corns

Hannah Dewhirst & Ingrid Schmidt

Joel Gerber

Mark Dineen & Michael Neville

Neda Mostafavi

Guided tours, invited critics and designer talks during the day.

Parking available off Oakland Street between E. Grand Blvd and Milwaukee Ave. Entrance to the gallery is on the north alley wall of the DOGE PRODUCTION BUILDING (FIRST FLOOR NORTH), 6545 ST. ANTOINE, DETROIT, MI 48202.

2016 Fellows Awarded23. March 2016

This summer we have the good fortune of being able to invite 10 young, critical practitioners to join the CPx experience as Fellows, responsible for leading each of their teams in an alternative approach to the challenges presented by Bittertang.

The 2016 Fellows are:

Hannah Dewhirst & Ingrid Schmidt (SUBSTUDIO) - New York/Detroit

Carrie Smith - New York

David Corns (Team B) - Cincinnati

Benje Feehan - Texas

Aaron Blendowski (OKDesign) - Detroit

Mark Dineen & Michael Neville (Zero Craft Corp.) - Detroit

Neda Mostafavi - New York

Joel Gerber - Toronto

2016 Call for Fellows20. November 2015

This call is for team leads for the summer 2016 session of Critical Practice Studio. Team leads, a blend between teaching mentors and visionary professionals, are awarded a CRITPraX Fellowship. It is a team-based, competitive charrette/workshop style studio that meets in four multi-day sessions over the summer. The studio is focused around a single architectural designer or practice involved in a critical practice; a masterclass. This year the master practitioner is Bittertang. The master practitioner frames the overall studio and sets the focus and the topics for the team projects. Each student team is organized around the Fellow, a second experienced practitioner who leads the studio group.

Applications should be emailed to Philip Plowright at pplowright -at- ltu dot edu by March 4, 2016. The jury will notify selected Fellows by March 18, 2016. Email subject line should be “CRITPraX16 Fellowship”.

CRITPraX runs as four intensive workshop charrettes over the summer semester.

Sessions start at 10:00 am on Friday morning and run through to working presentations on Sunday, ending at 2:00 pm. The weeks between sessions are for design teams to refine, develop and produce outcomes based on the proposal by the critical master practitioner.